Saturday, July 16, 2011

I
have been urged by a certain East Anglian cleric to update this little corner
of the internet. Quite why it stresses him so much I do not know, but, as you
know, I am always willing to help.

I
have chosen for my sermon the theme of thingy, you know, nudgenudgewinkwink.
Coitus. This is not because of any attempt to court controversy, but simply
because TCM have got it wrong again, unless my friends at the Torygraph have,
heaven forefend, failed to report accurately. Scientists have, according to a
science correspondent who looks barely old enough to have begun puberty, discovered
the point of sex. When they mean the point they mean the purpose, rather than
any unnecessary sharp objects that might form part of the ritual.

Here
is the reasoning. When a new being is created as a result of two other beings
of the same species being a bit bored and/or horny, then that being is better
equipped to deal with biological enemies such as parasites because of what is
quaintly called the blending of genomes. Have you had your genomes blended,
missus? By combining we keep ahead of parasites that are evolving to do a
better job of consuming us

.

This
may make sense; I care little. They now, however, say they have “solid evidence”.
Here it is:

“After exposing them to
a harmful bacteria, worms that reproduced through sex survived fairly well
while those that were asexual died rapidly.”

To
this I say ‘balderdash’. I would say that if your life prospects were limited
to performing self-stimulation and cloning yourself entirely to satisfy the
perverse curiosity of nerds, while you could see your mates in the next box
along were going at it like the clappers all hours of the day, would you not be
more inclined to roll over and look forward to some more satisfactory pastime
in the next life?